You’re never too old to take a leap of faith

Former Canadian Olympic team diver and fitness personality David Snively dives off the 7- meter platform while training for the coming FINA World Masters competition at Pointe Claire Pool.

Photograph by: John Mahoney
, The Gazette

Too often, we let age rob us of dreaming big. Gone are the youthful aspirations of playing in the NHL or competing in the Olympics. Instead, we settle for more reasonable goals like making it to the playoffs in old-timers hockey or being a back-of-the-pack competitor whose goal is simply to finish.

Yet there remain those brave few who say to hell with settling and decide, despite having more years behind them then ahead, the time is ripe for doing something extraordinary. David Snively is one of those few.

Snively has set his sights on diving at the FINA World Masters Championships, July 27 to Aug. 10 in Montreal. No stranger to a diving board, he was a seven-time Canadian diving champion and competed in the 1980 Olympic Games. But he’ll be 54 when he gets up in front of a hometown crowd this summer, and despite being in great shape and one of the city’s most popular personal trainers, the last time he was on a board was 30 years ago.

Diving is a highly skilled sport that demands incredible power, speed, strength, agility, balance, flexibility and a large dose of fearlessness — all of which take a hit with age. So while some sports adapt easily to an aging population, diving isn’t one of them. Yet Snively was determined to pull on his Speedo and see if he could rediscover his old form.

“My family is amazing, and I love my spouse and my business and everything, but I was feeling one of those shifts in life where you feel a bit of a slowdown, a little bit of the doldrums, and you don’t have as much of an edge,” Snively said. “We’re in this culture that glorifies youth, and I was wondering where I fit in among all those young trainers.”

So a year ago, when one of his clients mentioned the FINA Master’s event was coming to town, Snively picked up the phone and asked his former training partner, David Bedard, now an assistant coach at the Pointe-Claire Diving Club, if he would be his coach.

“I was proud to say: ‘Sure,’ ” said Bedard, who has always viewed Snively as a mentor for his own successful diving career that spanned four Olympic Games.

Armed with a coach and an invitation to train at Pointe-Claire Pool, which coincidentally was where he trained all those years ago, Snively got to work.

He started slowly, going back to basics and working on his compulsory dives. As it turns out, Snively’s training schedule puts him in the pool with some pretty good talent. Olympic medallists Jennifer Abel, Meaghan Benfeito and Roseline Filion share the boards with Snively, who also benefits from the expertise of Pointe-Claire head coach Yihua Li, who coached Olympians Anne Montminy and Émilie Heymans.

“That whole energy of being around people like that and revisiting something that I loved, well, I just fell back in love with diving,” Snively said.

One year later, Snively is still improving. His three-day-a-week training schedule has him in the pool two hours at time where he works hard at honing his technique. He also has to work at keeping his 53-year-old body from feeling the wear and tear of such high-intensity training. He sees a chiropractor weekly and an osteopath when needed. He’s also devised a 60-minute warm up routine that he does without fail before putting down his first dive.

“I’m really happy about how my body is holding up,” he said.

As for his diving, he’s pretty happy with that, too. A few weeks ago, he placed fifth out of 13 divers at the Quebec provincial diving championships. This wasn’t a masters’ event. The rest of the field were all under-20, who admittedly didn’t know quite what to make of Snively.

“Right before the event, there’s a 20- to 30-minute warm up with just the guys (in the event),” said a smiling Snively. “So 13 of us are up on the three-metre and one guy turns to me and says: ‘How old are you?’ And I was like: ‘Fifty-three. How old are you?’ ”

Admittedly, most of the younger competitors had a dive list with a greater degree of difficulty than Snively’s, but he was pleased with his first competition in three decades, especially since he had his spouse, daughter and several friends in the stands cheering him on.

“It felt good, and I had fun,” he said.

With only a couple more months to go before he competes against divers his own age, Snively is working even harder. He’s putting together an impressive dive list on the one- and three-metre springboard, and the 7.5-metre platform, and looking for a partner to compete with him in the three-metre and platform synchronized diving event.

According to Bedard, Snively has a good chance of winning it all.

“Looking at the list of dives that have been in the event in the past, David’s got a much higher degree of difficulty,” Bedard said. “So barring the possibility of someone like Greg Louganis showing up to compete or an off day, he should do well.”

Looks like all those years spent eating well and exercising regularly have paid off, not to mention the hard work he’s put into his comeback. But while gold is his ultimate goal, Snively has already got more from diving than he expected when he first took on the challenge.

“This has been such an amazing thing and at a perfect time,” said Snively of his comeback. “It’s mind-boggling that at 54, I’m throwing myself off a diving board.”

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